Rogue Berserker

by Fred Saberhagen

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Then you’re kind of stupid to keep asking me questions.”

  “When I heard you were coming to work for Cheng,” Satranji said, “I hit the old man up for a raise. I made a point of insisting that I get more than you do.”

  Harry grunted.

  Time passed. Satranji seemed to feel that the ball was still in his own court, and it bothered him. “Want to know, really, why I’m here, on this motherless chunk of rock?”

  “No, I don’t give a damn why. Or how much you get paid, or anything about you.”

  That had not been a soothing answer. Well, so be it. Something deeper than casual bravado was stirring in the eyes of the smaller man—something like deep rage. His voice was choked into a lower volume. “I can handle you, Silver, you’re supposed to be so famously motherless tough.”

  “All the famous motherless tough guys I ever knew have one thing in common—they’re all dead.”

  But it didn’t matter what Harry said, Satranji wasn’t listening any longer. “I can handle any human being that tries to stand up to me—”

  “Yippee for you.” Harry shifted the probe into his left hand. He recalled now that he had never got around to recharging his fighting ring. But he didn’t think it would be needed.

  “—but maybe somewhere there’s a fighting machine, a berserker, that’ll give me a real challenge, when I’m in a suit and in the pilot’s chair!”

  A door to an adjoining corridor was easing open. Dorijen appeared, face bland as usual, shapely body clad today in modest coveralls.

  Harry said: “Your lovely wife is here. You can ask her about my pay.”

  * * *

  Later in the morning, Louise Newari, talking to Harry alone, told him that Satranji had been working for Cheng Enterprises for several years, and had been brought in on the expedition because he was the best available expert on the Gravel Pit system, as well as a fine pilot and combat veteran. He was currently supposed to be engaged in planning the tactics of the raid—but so far no one had been able to do much in the way of planning, because there was still a total lack of any solid data about the objective they were going to attack.

  Evidently having heard something of the near-collision in the hangar bay—could Dorijen have been gossiping?—Louise concluded by putting a hand on Harry’s arm. She said: “I’m glad you didn’t fight him, Harry. I’m glad you walked around him.”

  “Same way I’d walk around a pile of doggy-do on the sidewalk.”

  He hadn’t really been trying to think back to the days of his first encounters with Satranji. Still, there came every once in a while a faint flash or two of intuition, of a suspicion that at one time he and this man had nearly been friends. But then their relationship had started to go sour, for some reason Harry could not remember now. It was just one of the many things in his life that he had never bothered to figure out.

  Satranji had one other claim to distinction, much more interesting from Harry’s point of view. He was the only person that either Cheng or the lady had mentioned as a suspect in Cheng’s investigation. But so far the investigation had not produced a molecule of evidence to link the angry man to either crime. And obviously both Cheng and his coordinator considered him of great value to the expedition.

  * * *

  Lady Masaharu, and Cheng himself, in conference with Satranji and Harry, agreed that more data was required on the numbers and positions of several hundred of the larger orbiting rocks, before a serious attempt could be made to reach the inner system. Of course it would be hopeless, even with the aid of robot scouts and computers, to try to track individually the millions of chaotic fragments. The best that could be done was to try to select a representative sample. The only useful calculations lay in the realm of statistics and probability.

  The Lady Masaharu made a firm announcement: “Whatever tactics we decide to adopt, we must take adequate time to prepare. Otherwise we will simply be killing ourselves uselessly, before we even get near the enemy.”

  * * *

  Doc and Harry immediately got along, and when Harry allowed himself time off, he spent much of it playing variations of computer chess with Doc, sometimes discussing certain aspects of the universe. Now and then another subject came up, for example the expedition’s prospects for success.

  Another example was Satranji and his claimed wife. Doc speculated that an attempt might have been made to download a real woman’s personality into the machine called Dorijen. There was always some human experimenter, somewhere in the Galaxy, making new efforts along that line. People had claimed success, with various degrees of credibility. But Doc, something of an expert in the field, doubted very much that Dorijen’s mind grew out of anything but hardware.

  Doc seemed more interested in the questions involved than in the individuals. “Is the urge to have sex with machinery an illness? If so, would Satranji be any better off if he were cured? Or is it that imitation flesh is safer, more reliable, than the real thing?”

  “I think sex is secondary to him, and I don’t know if he really screws his doll or not. His real compulsion is to offend as many people as he can.”

  Doc was among other things a physician/surgeon, expert in healing and restoring human bodies, especially brains and nervous systems, that had become badly embedded in or entangled with advanced optelectronics systems—berserkers in the past had tried to incorporate into their own devices some of the strengths and flexibilities possessed by living systems.

  No one liked to discuss the bottom-line reason why Doc’s specialized expertise was thought likely to be needed on this job, and why the coordinator had assigned him to the landing party instead of someone skilled in combat trauma. The truth was that his skills and expertise in rescuing and restoring human cells, organs, and in some cases practically recreating entire bodies could be of great use if the prisoners, when they could finally be pried loose from the berserker’s grip, had already been disassembled in some horrible way.

  Doc’s work with cultured embryos paralleled, in some ways almost duplicated, certain research projects in which the berserker enemy was thought to be also engaged.

  From time to time he dropped hints suggesting that he also felt he owed Winston Cheng a great debt of some kind—Harry assumed he might be trying to repay it.

  It had long been established that berserkers at times used live humans as research subjects, trying to learn more about the most serious opposition that they faced in their effort to sterilize the Galaxy. Harry had heard speculation that the bad machines were trying to create their own version of an ultimate weapon, in an all-out attempt to win the war with life.

  One intriguing theory was that high berserker command had come up with some projection indicating that otherwise the great effort to exterminate all life could fail. Or, if ultimate failure was not an option that a berserker could allow itself to consider, at least it could be drawn out endlessly.

  Harry said: “Any forecast like that would be mighty cheerful from the human point of view. I’d like to see it.”

  * * *

  There were times in the absorption of piloting or game-playing when Harry could feel the nightmare that had trapped him lifting momentarily, giving him a sign that eventually some return to full life might be possible—and he wasn’t sure that he welcomed the development. Grief at his loss was easing, just enough to allow anger to rise toward the surface, seeking an outlet.

  The customary gathering space for the whole crew was in the common room—wardroom, or refectory. During the previous occupation of the base, this space had served researchers and miners as a real mess hall, accommodating three or four times the small number of people who used it now. It tended to make the current occupants uneasy by suggesting that their numbers were too few, their force inadequate.

  One wall was enlivened by graphic promotional materials for Cheng Enterprises, encouraging everyone present to make use of the corporation’s products and services. No one seemed to pay the
m any particular attention.

  At the moment all recon ships were either inaccessible to communication, somewhere out amid the flying rocks, or else were grounded for maintenance. Harry stood, painfully idle, leaning his back against a wall of smooth, raw, lifeless stone, almost blankly watching Doc play against the computer.

  The other, somehow aware of being watched, looked over his shoulder. “Care for a game?”

  “Sure.” The board and pieces offered a way to occupy the mind, keeping a space cleared in the middle of the darkness.

  It seemed plain that the chess set hadn’t come with the territory. The board was an ancient artifact of genuine inlaid wood, in the thickness of which the required optelectronic circuits had long ago been skillfully and invisibly buried by some talented microengineer. The men were no less authentic, a fine antique set. Harry had been curious enough to ask a robot, and had learned that the black army had been carved, long ago, of some dark and heavy horn, and the white of true stamodont ivory. For the purposes of modern play, the machine had tagged each man, and each square of the board, with a tiny dot that let it keep track of all the pieces—also marked individually and invisibly—and physically move them when required. It seemed to Harry very likely that the whole set was extremely valuable—probably just another of Winston Cheng’s generous contributions to the cause.

  The most favored variant of this game was a half-computerized version of the ancient struggle, in which two or more humans each moved a separate team of pieces, fighting as allies to bring down the machine. There was a piece called the herald, who blew a tiny horn to signal an attack. The game had been crafted in such a way as to allow each of the two basic kinds of intelligence to benefit from its own innate advantages. Some players favored a version in which pieces could be captured and then ransomed and released.

  Doc lost, in less than thirty moves. Then, while the pieces rearranged themselves for a new game, Doc studied him, elbow propped on table, head in hand. At last he said: “You’re tougher than I thought you’d be.”

  “Everybody’s got their own estimate of how tough I am—what the hell, it was just luck.”

  “Luck, in this game? Come on. I suppose when you made that move with the herald you just chose a piece at random, and then just closed your eyes and put it anywhere. Nothing but pure chance. Yeah, sure.”

  “Do you know anything about chance, Doc?” Harry’s voice had suddenly gone slow and quiet, as if he might be talking in his sleep. “I mean, really know anything? What is it? What can it do?”

  Doc looked round, almost furtively, though it seemed doubtful that anyone would be bothering to spy on their conversation. Probably it was just out of habit. He said: “Talking metaphysics over a drink or a chessboard is one thing. Living with it day to day is something else.”

  Harry squinted at him. “I don’t—”

  “What I’m saying, Harry, is that in the real world, if any strange happening seems too unlikely to be the result of pure chance—then you had better believe that it is not.”

  “Doc. Do you know something I ought to know?”

  “I’ve got no secret knowledge about kidnappings. All I mean, all I know, is what I said.”

  “So you don’t believe in coincidence. But sometimes it has to happen.”

  Doc was shaking his head. “Not on the level of the two kidnappings, it doesn’t. Not in the world where you and I are trying to make a living.”

  “But you forget, Doc. That’s not what we’re trying to do. Not on this rock. Not any longer.”

  In moments when Harry allowed himself to ponder the reality of what he was doing, he realized that it really made little sense to claim to be preparing for a rescue operation. What had really brought him here was the chance to get some satisfaction out of hitting back. He was on 207GST because he wanted to fight berserkers until they killed him, and he just wanted to get the business over with. Why Satranji had to complicate it all, he couldn’t say. Soon enough there was going to be more fighting than any of them could stand.

  * * *

  Doc was somewhat bolder than anyone else in expressing his doubts about the usefulness, or even the sanity, of trying to organize a rescue expedition for long-term berserker prisoners—though he allowed himself to voice his reservations only after he had got to know Harry a little better.

  “I think you understand as well as I do, Harry—maybe better than I do—that what we’re preparing for is not really a rescue attempt. We all keep telling ourselves so, but that’s just delusional.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “We’re going on a punitive expedition, organized against machines.”

  “Is that what you think? Or is Winston Cheng organizing it to punish himself?”

  “Punish himself for what?”

  “Haven’t you ever wondered? Why didn’t Cheng have the two young people with him, if they were so all-important in his life?”

  * * *

  Both of Harry’s hotshot young pilots, having had time to get a good look at the situation, were having second thoughts about the exciting adventure for which they had signed up, and casting about for ways to get out of the contracts they had most recently signed with Cheng.

  The one who had been so honored by getting to work with Harry was grumbling now: “I didn’t sign on for no motherless armed excursion into hell.”

  Harry grunted. He himself was already about seven circles down in the place of hot damnation, and the only visible way out was the road on which old Winston Cheng was leading the way. That path would carry Cheng and his crew right straight through the middle of the pit, right in among hell’s devils, close enough to shoot back at them.

  A couple of times Cheng had quietly let it be known that anyone who got a serious case of cold feet, even up to the last hour before launch, could be excused from taking part. But the last courier would already have left the wanderworld by then, and late dropouts would be compelled by circumstances to remain there until another ship showed up. And by then the job would have been concluded, one way or another.

  Harry had grunted. Satranji had made a tough little speech expressing his great contempt for any suggestion of backing out.

  Doc proclaimed, cautiously at first, that he had never met anyone who had been a prisoner of berserkers and lived to tell the tale.

  Satranji looked up from something he had been reading. “What’s the matter, Doc? Can it be you’re losing faith in our mission?”

  Doc looked at the smaller man thoughtfully for several seconds. “Seems to me human lives are kind of important.”

  “If you’re so anxious to go on living, Doc, I don’t know what you’re doing on this project.”

  “Same thing you are, I guess. As you say, the pay is great. And if I don’t live to collect mine, no one’s going to miss me.”

  So why was he, Doc, here, risking his life? Harry heard pieces of the story, with variations, from different people. Doc had run here to escape authorities who were trying to arrest him. He was a physician (that much was confirmed) who’d got into legal trouble on a distant world by having “something to do with abortions.”

  Not performing them, no, that was legal there—his supposed crime had been described as an attempt to rescue or preserve certain human embryonic entities, organisms created and destined to serve as production facilities for certain types of cells that were in great demand for research purposes. Doc’s ambition had been to acquire a number of artificial wombs, and use them to grow the pilfered embryos up to full-term fetuses, establishing them on the path that led through birth to normal life.

  The one time he’d talked to Harry about it, he had concluded tersely: “Corporation that owned the embryos wasn’t too happy about all that.”

  Harry grunted. “I guess they wouldn’t be. What happened, finally?”

  Doc shrugged. “I’m here, where most of the law in the Galaxy will have a hard time getting at me.”

  A lot of specialized medical gear had been assembled, includi
ng some of Doc’s machines that he had used to rescue embryos. The devices were upsized, of course, to be able to handle larger fragments of humanity. A carefully chosen selection of them was going to be packed on the ship that led the assault.

  * * *

  Some members of the assault group were having a hard time controlling their impatience. “If things keep going at this pace, standard months will have passed between the first kidnapping, and the time when we actually reach the place where we think the victims might be held—if we ever get that far. Do any of us seriously believe that a berserker’s prisoners are going to last that long?”

  Harry knew from experience that it damn sure didn’t happen often, captives of a berserker getting out alive; but he could testify that it had happened.

  Harry had not been surprised by the prolonged delay in the arrival of the secret weapon that Winston Cheng had hyped at their first meeting—or even by the fact that Cheng had never mentioned it again. In Harry’s experience, secret weapons tended to have only tentative existence, sometimes evaporating completely. But Cheng wouldn’t be simply bluffing. Harry’s guess was that it had to be some kind of specially outfitted ship. What did worry Harry were what he took to be certain indications that the whole project was in danger of collapsing into hopeless farce.

  The Lady Masaharu did mention the weapon once, quite calmly. She said that no more information could be given out just yet, but that it was real and would play a key role in their attack.

  By this time other members of the crew were catching Harry’s concern.

  One of the more practical members of the group observed: “What worries me is, where’s this secret-weapon bomb or ship or whatever it’s supposed to be? All we’ve seen so far are yachts, and they’re not going to come close to getting the job done.”